


Bar Bets and Other Unwinnable Games

by Prix



Series: It's Always Sunny in Domino City [7]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series, Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Clubbing, Dancing, Friendship, Multi, Parental Expectations, Pre-Relationship, Some Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 05:16:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16825900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prix/pseuds/Prix
Summary: Anzu makes a decision to figure out what she wants, even if it kills her, and forces Honda into the same agreement. Also, Honda has learned that Otogi has a new job and invites himself to visit him at work. Several decisions later, it seems that one of the Gang might be in over their head and about to take someone else down with them.





	Bar Bets and Other Unwinnable Games

_ A park near the university in Domino City, Japan  _

  
  


Anzu’s fingers tug and pull at blades of grass as if she is trying to untangle knots from its hair. She sits on the ground with the longest strap of her duffel bag looped around one calf just to keep it secure, her school bag just beyond her right hand for safekeeping. She feels the warm sun, the thick wind, and keeps sitting there rhythmically grooming the earth – thinking. 

Sometimes, when she thinks about it long and hard enough, she is almost resolved to get up, walk to the registration offices, and speak to one of the counselors about changing one or two of her classes. Then, before she can rise to her feet and collect her things, her eyes burn. She stubbornly resists the ache and stays right where she is, combing grass and hearing the world pass her by. Kids play in the background. Their parents chase after them, encouraging and fussing. 

She has had that – all her life, some watchful eyes telling her which way to go, what to do. A lot of her friends  _ don’t _ have that, or if they do it comes in strange, cracked, broken forms that don’t resemble the home she goes back to each night, still to her childhood bedroom. 

She doesn’t want to disappoint them. And yet… 

“Hey, Anzu!” she hears, ringing through her thoughts and getting her to look back over her shoulder. She sees Honda leap just a little down the slight incline from the street level where the benches are on level ground. He catches himself and stumble-runs the last few steps to her. “What’re you doing here?” 

Anzu looks all the way up to his eyes from where she sits on the ground. She squints at his less-than-majestic sun halo. She reaches up to shield her eyes so his look something a little more akin to human. 

“Communing with the ants,” she says. 

“Can I do it, too?” Honda asks, undeterred by her making fun. He braces himself a bit and plops down beside her on the ground. 

“Good day?” Anzu asks, deflecting beyond her own heavier thoughts, hoping they won’t show. 

“Turns out, I have a business class with someone we know,” he replies, grinning. 

“Both of us,” Anzu remarks, her eyelids a little heavy with resignation to a dreary sort of feeling that has settled over her in spite of the summertime weather. 

“Last time I checked. Otogi!” he explains, not waiting for further prompting. 

Anzu thinks it over for a second. It makes as much sense as anything. She nods without saying anything else. 

“He looked really surprised to see me there,” Honda reports proudly, but she knows his own reluctance. 

“I’m sure you’re as qualified to run a business as he is,” Anzu says. Now that he is with her, she lets herself fall onto her back on the grass with her legs still folded at odd angles. She closes her eyes against the bright sky. 

“There something wrong with you?” he asks. 

Anzu sighs. She doesn’t know if she should tell him or simply admit that there might be. 

“After all, his family business burned to the ground…” she rambles. Suddenly, she feels the soft poke of one of Honda’s knuckles against her temple. She cracks open her eyes, scowls, and bats his hand away all in one motion. 

“I asked you a question,” Honda reminds her. 

Anzu sighs and feels herself sink a little into the ground. She squints at him and the sky, allowing her eyes to adjust. Then she just stares up into the deep, hazy blue. 

“Do you ever think you’re just… making a mistake?” she asks. 

“All the time,” Honda says with a disturbing lack of thinking it through first. Then he does pause. “Making a mistake how?” 

“Taking a dance class.  _ Lying _ about taking a dance class,” Anzu explains. 

“Why are you lying about it?” Honda asks, furrowing his brow when she glances at him. 

“To my parents,” she says. 

“Ohhh,” he says, like that makes all the difference in the world. “I do that, too, sometimes,” he says. 

“I thought you were in business class,” Anzu asks, noting the most significant difference in their schedules. 

“Yeah, but… my folks don’t always know where I am, who I’m with, where I go…” he explains. “I don’t go out of my way to avoid telling them the truth, but sometimes it’s just… easier.” 

For some reason, it has never occurred to Anzu that Honda might be in the same boat as her in this regard. They lead very different home lives, but she wonders if there’s actually that much difference at all, relatively speaking. 

“So are you going to do anything about it?” she asks after mulling it over. 

“What, like tell my dad that I might not be taking the business classes  _ for him _ ?” Honda suggests. 

Anzu nods despite not having a set course for the question. 

Honda looks up at the sky in turn and shrugs with one shoulder. 

“If it comes up, if it  _ matters _ , I’ll tell ‘em,” he says. “And if it turns out it never matters, then I guess they  _ won _ in the end anyway. And if they’re… right about me? That following in their footsteps is all I can do? Then no one ever needs to know I thought different.” 

Anzu breathes in and out deeply, taking in the scent of the grass all around her. She pushes herself up into a seated position and turns at her waist, sliding to face him where they sit on the ground. She tilts her head and reaches up to finger-comb through her hair, removing any stray blades of grass. 

“You really think it’s that simple?” she asks him. It’s a novel thought to her, at least in her current state of mind. 

Honda widens his eyes a little at her sudden interest. 

“Yeah?” he responds uneasily, on the spot. “I mean, we’ve been running all over the world… seeing… magic and crazy things that really don’t have anything to do with us. And we made it,” he explains. “What’s the point if we don’t do something with it? We could’ve died already and our parents wouldn’t have known why. What’s the harm in figuring this part of our lives out the way we want?” 

Anzu presses her lips into a tight line for a long moment before answering him. Then she lifts her hand and offers her pinky to him, outstretched. 

“Hmm?” he hums, questioning her. 

“I promise I’m going to figure out what I want, even if it kills me,” she announces formally. 

“That’s… a little bit of a harsh read on what I just said,” Honda points out, only for Anzu to insistently offer her pink to him. 

He lifts his hands in surrender. 

“Okay, geez,” he agrees, and extends the appropriate pinky, momentarily looping it around hers. 

\- - - 

_ Club Amulet - a large nightlife complex in Domino City, late afternoon  _

  
  


As Honda walks in, Otogi straightens himself behind the gleaming surface of the bar, hand still partially hidden beneath a cloth.

“What are you doing here?” Otogi asks flatly. 

“I came by to see where you work,” Honda replies, looking left and right and making a face like he might whistle if he could only find the right pitch. He doesn’t whistle, though. Instead, he meets Otogi’s eyes and glances down at his hand, figuring out what he’d caught him in the middle of doing – making the place shine for the night ahead. For a split second, Honda wonders just how dirty it will get before Otogi’s shift is finished. His nose crinkles a little bit, which must rub Otogi the wrong way. 

“How did you get in here?” he asks. 

“Oh,” Honda says, looking back over his shoulder, “I just said I knew you. They let me in.” 

He watches as something flickers over Otogi’s face – suspicion or nerves or downright disbelief – but it is gone before it’s worth remarking on. 

“Right,” Otogi says. “I guess they just thought you were a friend,” he says. 

“Well, I am, aren’t I?” Honda challenges him fondly. 

“Sure,” Otogi says, going back to what he had been doing before, his eyes downcast. 

“So what got you on here? Pretty fancy,” Honda continues, undeterred. He sits down at the bar, resting his elbows against it. Otogi looks up and gives him a mild glare. Honda lifts his arms and peeks beneath them. “My jacket’s there. No harm done,” he says, resuming his previous position. 

“My father talked to one of the owners, and I’m good at getting tips,” Otogi replies simply. 

“Oh, right. With your dice and stuff,” Honda agrees as he recalls. A longer silence follows until Honda clears his throat. 

“So… why did you stop by?” Otogi says, rephrasing his original question – at once more friendly and insistent. 

“I just thought I’d come by to see how one of my friends was making it work,” he says. 

“Making what work?” 

“You know. A job, Your life. I thought you seemed pretty happy in class the other day,” Honda says. 

“It’s a way up,” he says. 

“And you were glad to see me, right?” Honda teases with a grin. 

“... Totally,” Otogi replies, reluctant and dry. “If you want me to be really glad to see you, you could come back tonight with some cash.” 

Honda is surprised by the invitation. He thinks it over and turns on the bar stool to look around at the large club. It has dance floors and a pool and a full restaurant besides what he sees right here – and that’s without paying a VIP fee. He considers it and the conversation he and Anzu had in the park. He wonders if it might be just the thing to cheer Anzu up. He doesn’t really want to bring Jounouchi to a bar, but there are other things to do here. He settles on the notion that it might even be a good idea. 

“Can I bring my friends?” he asks. 

By the time he speaks, Otogi has knelt down behind the bar and appears to be doing some sort of inventory. 

“Sure,” he says absently. 

“I’ll see you tonight, then!” Honda says, undeterred by the fact that Otogi is busy. He gets up, off to find his friends since they are rarely in the same place without some wrangling anymore. 

\- - - 

_ Kame Game Shop  _

Anzu slips into the front entrance of the game shop just minutes before she knows Yugi or his grandfather will lock the doors for the night. He reaches behind herself and braces the closing of the door as if the soft ringing of the bell above the door might be something to be muffled. A glance down the long, narrow shop reveals no customers and a slightly darkened atmosphere as if perhaps one of the light switches has already been flipped. She meets Yugi’s eyes which widen behind the counter and cash register. 

“Anzu,” he says softly. 

“I tried texting you,” she says. 

Yugi frowns and reaches down into someplace beneath the counter, drawing out his phone and checking. 

“Oh, you did,” he says as he navigates with his thumb. “Sorry,” he apologizes. “I was working and must not have heard it vibrate,” he explains. 

“No need,” Anzu says with a wave of her hand. She glances at the time on her own phone and back at the door. “Want me to get it?” she asks. 

Yugi seems to look at the time and then double-checks on an analog clock hanging on the wall. He gives a half-shrug, his bare shoulder jutting upward. 

“Sure,” he says amicably. Anzu turns and winds the lock into place and approaches Yugi, a familiar movement that she’s done sometimes over the years she has been coming to this place. 

“What’s up?” Yugi asks, his posture itself attentive. 

“I was going to ask you,” Anzu says, reaching up to pull a few strands of hair which have inadvertently stuck to the corner of her mouth back out of her face, “what you were doing tonight.” 

She pauses for an instant, distracted with the itch of her hair being out of place. 

“... Uhm,” Yugi fills the silence, considering it, “nothing much?” he suggests. He seems a little disappointed in himself, and she doesn’t know why. 

“Well,” Anzu says, fiddling with her phone to pull up the website again since she is on Yugi’s WiFi, “Honda wanted me to ask you if you wanted to come with us to this club place that Otogi started working.” 

“You and Honda?” Yugi asks, and Anzu doesn’t even really consider the note of apprehension in his voice. She hears it, but she doesn’t consider it. 

“And Jounouchi,” she explains. 

“Oh,” Yugi says – she hears the note of relief in his voice. This time, her mouth presses into a tight line for a second. “Sure,” he replies, smiling pleasantly. “I’d… be glad to?” He looks left and right as if he has no idea what to do next now that he’s agreed to leave his combined house and workplace. 

“Come on,” Anzu drawls, stepping behind the counter and rapping her knuckles against Yugi’s bicep. It is still soft and cool to the touch, the way it has always been, but she wonders if it isn’t a little bit more developed than it used to be. She dismisses the thought as quickly as it comes. She walks through the door into the Mutou residence before Yugi, leading the way up to his room. She knows he’ll follow her, the way he has hundreds of times before. 

Once inside his room, Anzu walks over to his closet and opens it. She thumbs through the clothes on hangers and then through those that are folded into a stack on a shelf. A moment later, she finds the pair of black jeans she had been looking for and tosses them – still folded – onto his half-made bed. 

“What’re you doing?” Yugi asks when he catches up to her a few seconds later. 

“Picking out your clothes,” she replies as she selects a fresh shirt for him, too. It’s another black, sleeveless top, but it’s a little more fitted and he can afford it. 

“What’s wrong with these?” Yugi complains as he comes to her side, outstretching his arms to indicate himself. 

Anzu looks over at him, up and down. 

“Nothing,” she says. “But you’ve been working all day, right? And I want you to feel good about yourself,” she says knowingly. 

She doesn’t even have to watch his face brighten and flush, but she sees it out of the corner of her eye as she gently shoves the hanger with the top on it against his chest so he reaches up to take it. She closes the closet door and moves around him to sit neatly on the edge of his bed. Meanwhile, Yugi slips around and opens a drawer somewhere behind her. She knows he’s fishing out fresh underwear and socks, but he moves as if he were trying to disappear until he manages to balance the folded pair of pants on top of them. She doesn’t mind pretending she doesn’t notice certain things to make him feel better about them. 

“I’ll… see you in a few minutes,” he says a bit awkwardly as he stands before her then backs away from where she sits on the corner of his bed. 

Her knees are held tight together, but she relaxes a little and kicks up one of her ankles. 

“I’m fine,” she says, looking up for a moment with a bit of an eye-roll. It isn’t as if she hasn’t spent an equivalent of months of her childhood in his room and around other parts of the Mutou house. 

\- - -

_ Club Amulet  _

Jounouchi isn’t sure how he had allowed himself to get dragged out to a nightclub such a short time after his first, extremely regrettable, and hopefully last experience with getting drunk. However, Honda had insisted again and again that it wasn’t about getting drunk. There were a lot of things to do, he’d insisted. Girls, food, and pretty light shows. Ordinarily, Jounouchi thought he might have been more tempted, but the fact that he knows there is an open bar and no one likely to tell him ‘no,’ makes him hesitant. He wishes, somehow, that he could go back. 

Honda promises over and over that no one else has to know about that night. He doesn’t blackmail him with it, and yet the thought crosses Jounouchi’s mind. He would really rather  _ no one else _ found out about it. The same thought keeps running through his mind as they come up on the line for the door at the agreed time. He stuffs his hands deep into his pockets. 

Anzu’s voice startles him out of his pouting. He lifts his gaze and looks back over his shoulder to see her leading Yugi across the street with her arm lifted up in a wave. Her words come into focus once she’s a little closer. 

“Thought we might beat you here,” she is saying to Honda. 

Honda coyly dismisses the suggestion. 

“Jounouchi didn’t make himself as presentable,” he says with a friendly, encouraging jab of his elbow into Yugi’s ribs. Yugi shies away from it with a little grunt. 

“Hey, I showered,” Jounouchi defends himself. Even if Honda refrains from using the most powerful ammunition against him, he still feels a little self-conscious, as if he is just waiting for him to step on his toes about something. He really wishes there were something to take the edge off his nerves for an instant, then dismisses the thought. 

\- - - 

There is something almost painfully dazzling about walking into the club Honda has taken them to. Anzu casts her gaze upward first, following the arch of a high ceiling and noticing the way the whole place is lit like a stage. As her eyes scan downward enough to settle on some of the people, she notices that few of them hardly look real. It is hard to make sense of anyone but the immediate, the familiar. Without thinking about it, her hands flatten a bit and her fingers spread out as if she needs some anchor or brace as she takes a deep breath. To her left, her last two fingers tap against Yugi’s arm. She glances over at him quickly, a bit startled, and he is already looking at her. 

“You okay?” he asks, a faint turn of amusement on his lips and reaching his eyes. 

“Yeah,” she says quickly, confidently. Then she turns to Honda, looking training her gaze upward to look at him. “This is incredible,” she tells him gratefully. 

Honda gives her a nonchalant shrug and a playfully indifferent expression. 

“What can I say? I know people,” he tells her. It would sound arrogant except they all know exactly who he means, and after all this time it isn’t really that impressive. 

Anzu presses forward through the initial crowd toward a place that looks like there is a bit more standing and breathing room. The place is so large it seems like it would be easy to get lost, so every so often she glances back over her shoulder to make sure the four of them stay together. She loves it here, or at least the idea of being here, but she is paralyzed by the choices and the confines of it at the same time. It reminds her of being in New York and of the dream of going back. It reminds her of her savings account which her parents had convinced her would never be enough –  _ not yet  _ a part of her still defies them. 

\- - - 

At first, Yugi doesn’t think he minds the crowd and the noise, the thudding bass that he can feel all the way to his core. He doesn’t really know what to do with himself, but without too much self-consciousness he keeps time with the rhythm, especially songs he knows, bobbing lightly on his knees. He feels Honda’s hand reach up and scruff the back of his hair at the crown of his head. He ducks down a little and reaches up to push the offending hand off and to try and assess the damage. 

He notices Anzu’s eyes on him, an amused twinkle in them. 

“How bad is it?” he asks. 

She shakes her head and purses her lips. He hopes that she means that there isn’t anything wrong. He swallows hard and glances past their little group. He notices people dancing together, and sometimes it’s hard to tell who is dancing with whom – boys and girls, girls and girls, boys and boys. It makes him feel even dizzier for the instant that he notices, but then he smiles right through it. He glances back up at Anzu – the line of her jaw and whatever makeup runs against her cheek, catching light from above and around and even beneath – shadow, too. 

“Hey, Anzu—” he starts to ask her. It catches her attention, but it seems a little delayed, as if he hadn’t spoken quite loudly enough to pierce the din around them. Her eyes are kind when they meet his, but the question dies on his tongue. He wouldn’t know what to do, and she actually  _ does _ . Unlike some of the other girls on the polished, dark floor, spinning round and around, Anzu knows how to do more than simply move slightly at her waist when the music demands it. She has control over it, and she stands perfectly still – elegant – in the midst of it with a poise that his own  _ knees _ don’t even have. 

“D’you want to dance?” she asks him next. First. Like it’s nothing. Before he knows it, his tongue is pressed lightly against his teeth, but he doesn’t say anything. He smiles against it, but he lightly shakes his head. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know what he is doing, saying ‘no,’ to the very thing he had been about to ask for. But then, it makes him feel like there are some things which will never, ever change. 

“No,” he forces himself to say, committed now against his better judgment. He lifts his hand, fingers gently parted in a sign of surrender. “I’m… sure I’d be bad at it,” he says. Then he notices her about to interject, to insist that he wouldn’t be, and he knows the one thing that would hurt more than what he does to himself right now is her pity. He shakes his head a little more earnestly and takes a step back, catching Jounouchi’s attention too as he brushes past his arm. 

“What’s the matter?” Jounouchi asks him. 

“I’m fine,” Yugi insists curtly. Then he sees an out as he glances up at Jounouchi’s eyes. And just maybe a way back in… He lowers his nervous hands down to his sides and takes a steadying breath. “I’m still getting my bearings,” he apologizes to Anzu, trying to recover some of his dignity. He gives a jerking nod over toward Jounouchi. “I’m sure he’s up for it.” 

He sees it and gets a little thrill with Anzu picks up on the hint of mischief in his eyes and mirrors it with her own. All at once, she squares up to Jounouchi and seizes him by his jacket sleeves. 

“He-ey, what’s going on?” he demands, glancing after Yugi, but it’s too late. Anzu has started to drag him out into the center of the swirling lights, the center of it all, a little closer to the platform where the DJ is set up, making a show of the recorded music. Whatever Anzu says to Jounouchi is drowned out in the noise once more, but Yugi feels nothing but absolute relief wash over him for a moment. 

He knows them both. He  _ trusts  _ them, and he knows what’s between them. He knows that there is no part of him that could be roused to jealousy at this point. It gives him space to breathe, space to think. Now he just needs to find someplace a little closer to quiet – someplace he can  _ conference _ with himself. 

He watches as Jounouchi complains and then begins to halfheartedly wave his arms, lifted but only halfway, bent at the elbows, like some sort of pantomime of a dinosaur. He watches as Anzu pushes him lightly, a hand falling on her hip. He finds himself smiling. Then he turns and sets off to find a bathroom. 

Stepping beneath the right correct door frame, for a moment all Yugi sees is darkness. Then he comes out on the other side of the short bend of a hallway and has to blink. Outside, back on the dancefloor and throughout the  _ layers _ of this place, there is a darkness punctuated with light that gives everything and everyone a hazy, vibrant look to them that feels like a dream. Here, the light is uninterrupted, cold and white. He walks up to a sharp, metallic-framed mirror that angles forward a bit for some reason. The antiseptic scent of the bathroom mixed with other, less pleasant scents that seem to speak of the overconsumption of alcohol sting at his nose. He reaches out and waves his fingers in front of the sink reservoir, trying to summon the stream of water from the sensor. 

It draws his full attention for a moment, anchoring him. He grumbles at it, and it finally spits out water in a stream that tickles at the back of his hand. Quickly turning his hand over, palm facing the water flow, he notices out cold it is. Only, it barely dampens his hand in something cool before the sensor decides there isn’t enough movement to continue running water. Yugi sighs and waves his hand again in the extremely particular way the sink seems to like. When he has enough cool water on his hand, he splashes it against one side of his face. 

_ “Yugi?”  _ the Pharaoh asks, and Yugi doesn’t feel alone at the row of sinks anymore. Anyone else walking by wouldn’t see him, but Yugi glances over and for a moment, he does – something like a mirror image and something not like it at all.  _ “Are you alright?”  _

“Yeah,” he mumbles, waving his fingers in front of the little black square of a sensor, making to squirt out more water and coaxing it closer to warmth. This seems to catch the Spirit’s attention. 

_ “Some sort of magic?”  _

Yugi smiles and stifles a chuckle. 

_ “No,”  _ he responds, seamless and silent as he notices another guy walk into the bathroom. He doesn’t know why he finds it so funny, but he fights his smile until it hurts a little. 

_ “Then what is it? Where are we?”  _   


Yugi meets his own eyes in the mirror as it seems that they are  _ one _ again as someone else comes up to use a sink a couple down from his. 

_ “I’m alright,”  _ he promises.  _ “I just… I was going to ask Anzu to dance, and I choked.”  _   


_ “It seems that she would enjoy dancing for you. She did in front of me once, even if it was under some duress…”  _

Yugi frowns a little at his own reflection and then reaches up as if to manually smooth the line. 

_ “Not  _ **_for_ ** _ me,”  _ Yugi insists, trying not to picture what he thinks the Pharaoh must be picturing.  _ “With me.”  _

_ “You’re a dancer?”  _ the Pharaoh asks skeptically. 

_ “Exactly,”  _ Yugi replies silently while sighing aloud. Now that he has gotten the water warm, he washes his hands just to keep from wasting the trip or looking insane to the young man next to him. He is about to explain to the Pharaoh what he hopes he’ll help him do when something – someone – distracts him. Rather than politely ignoring him, he notices that the man who’d been washing in the sink by him turns to look at him. He looks him up and down, and it gives Yugi the faintest sense that something is amiss. He tries not to jump to conclusions and glances up to the other man’s eyes, ready to smile but withholding it a moment longer. 

“You here alone, kid?” the man who can’t be more than two or three years older than Yugi asks. 

“... Not exactly,” Yugi replies, quite honestly and glad for it. 

The stranger raises his eyebrows. 

“Too bad,” he says. “Coulda made your night.” 

Then the man turns and walks away. 

Yugi feels a bit dizzy, weak in the knees. Even if it negates some of the purpose of washing his hands, he reaches back with one of them and braces himself on the wide, long sink basin. 

_ “Perhaps he would dance with you _ ,” the Pharaoh offers when it is obvious that there had been no danger at all. 

“Shut up,” Yugi grumbles to himself, hoping he is  _ as _ alone as he thinks he is yet again.  _ “... But I do think I need your help…”  _

_ “I think we’ve tried this before…”  _ the Pharaoh chides him. 

\- - - 

Jounouchi stands before Anzu on the dance floor, close to the DJ’s platform. He occasionally appeases her, then annoys her with some very ineffectual attempt to dance. For a moment, he just stares up at the turn table, wondering if it is even the real thing. He figures if it were artificial that someone wouldn’t be getting paid that much to do it, though. Anzu drags his attention back again, this time taking hold of his right forearm and tugging him a bit closer. 

“Jounouchi, are you alright?” she asks when he is pulled close enough to hear an almost conversational shout above the music. 

He furrows his brow then nods, quickly recovering a convincing expression. 

“Yeah, definitely,” he agrees. “Why wouldn’t I be?” 

“You just seem a little less happy to be here than I thought you would be.” 

Anzu never misses a thrum of the music while she stands there. It’s pretty impressive, distracting even, but he fixes his eyes on hers and avoids the dizziness. He takes a cue from Yugi and just sort of bounces on his knees, maybe looking  _ less _ like an idiot. 

“To be here?” he asks, then smirks. “Nah, but I thought this was more your thing.” 

He sees Anzu’s cheeks flush and his smirk turns into a smile. He reaches out and quickly squeezes her shoulder fondly. 

“You’re doing fine,” he reassures her, trying to make it clear that he doesn’t mean any harm. She nods and lightly rolls her shoulder back, letting him let go. 

“Well you should try it,” she says. 

“Try what?” 

“To dance.” 

“I  _ am _ dancing,” he says, planting his feet and giving his hips a little exaggerated sway. 

Anzu rolls her eyes and shoves him back a step or two. 

“None of you really have  _ any _ idea, do you?” she asks. 

“How to dance? Other than all by myself, jumping up and down on my bed with my dad passed out in his chair? Not really.” 

Anzu’s expression sobers for a second, but he shakes his head dismissively. It’s true, more than it’s sad at this point. 

“I can show you,” she says, offers. 

“Show me how to dance?” Jonouchi asks. He pauses for a moment and gives her a puzzled look. “Why?” 

“Fun? A way out?” she asks. 

“Are you suggesting that I get up there like one of those girls getting her ankles drooled on for some cash?” he counters. 

Challengingly, Anzu shrugs. 

“Only if you want to,” she says dismissively. Then she reaches out and takes both his forearms, positioning them against her. “Your hands don’t go anywhere I don’t tell them to,” she warns very fiercely, glancing over her shoulder at him as she turns her back to him, draping his wrists over her shoulders to start. “Deal?” 

Jounouchi feels his face color a little and glances away in the direction he’d seen Yugi dart. He feels a little guilty, if only because he knows Yugi would probably die to be in his shoes. Still, he nods. Anzu is trying to do something nice, and it might be fun. He’ll try it, he decides quickly. 

“Deal,” he remembers to say after a moment. Then the lesson begins. She never quite moves far enough back to cause a problem for him, and then she turns around while his hands are still in place. She moves them, sometimes closer to her body and sometimes into a different position. He feels as much like a mannequin as a man sometimes, but then he almost starts to feel the music carry him somewhere else. Then he’s glad one of his friends is there with him, so it isn’t so empty to just be a bit freer of the sweaty crowd around them. 

He feels himself growing breathless after a little while, but he is trying to pay attention. He is laughing, and he feels lighter – almost giddy – than anything he has known in a long while. He sees a warmth in Anzu’s eyes – when he manages to see them – that he thinks belongs in there. He doesn’t want to disappoint her. Then, in the lull between songs, he finally steps back and lets his arms fall heavily to his sides. 

“What’s the matter, Jounouchi?” Anzu challenges him playfully. There is a hint of breathlessness in her voice, but it is nothing to what he feels. 

“I think it’s about time you choose another victim,” he replies, meeting her in the middle. 

At first, Anzu seems to take it for its base meaning, but then she seems to read more into it by the second. 

“What do you mean?” she asks. 

Jounouchi really hadn’t meant anything but what he’d said, but then he nods back in the direction Yugi had gone. He glances over in that direction to see if he sees him. 

“I mean he wants to dance with you,” he says. “He just doesn’t know how to ask.” 

Anzu blinks a couple of times, also scanning the crowd for Yugi, perhaps more intently. 

Jounouchi smiles, satisfied with himself. He feels like he’s turned a good deed where there hadn’t been one in the first place. 

“I’ll go get us something to drink while you think about it,” he volunteers with a little playful salute in Anzu’s direction. Then he begins veering his way through the crowd toward the much less densely crowded area of the bar. 

\- - - 

Otogi notices that Honda and the others showed up, as Honda had promised quite unnecessarily. They don’t seem to be doing anything that will lose him his job, though, so after tracking their movements with some distant interest for a little while, he all but forgets about their presence. He goes about tending his bar, wiping it down, making small talk, and  _ making recommendations _ with his usual, easy-going and half-invested demeanor. It seems to keep his customers placated and coming back, so it works. 

A couple of girls stick close to each other as they approach him again. He notices that one of them seems particularly interested in meeting his eyes. He straightens his posture and obliges her at least that much. He asks them for their orders and listens more than he speaks as he prepares the colorful drinks they ask for. Mood-lighting reflections in them and back onto the girls’ smiling faces, and they’re pretty enough but Otogi isn’t swayed by them. Soon, they retreat somewhere else, close as ever. 

A familiar presence approaches out of the corner of Otogi’s eye. He feels it and begins to smirk. It is so predictable. But before that presence can shimmy is way up alongside the bar, a much  _ more _ familiar presence – oddly enough – charges up to him head-on. 

“Hey, Otogi, what’s up,” Jounouchi says to him as he stands before him as if there could not possibly have been anything else for him to do. 

Otogi recovers his focus and meets Jounouchi’s eyes. 

“What do you want?” he asks quietly. 

Jounouchi widens his eyes more than is necessary and settles them into a narrowed expression. 

“That’s not any way to treat a customer, is it?” he asks, rhetorically. 

“Are you a customer?” Otogi asks him simply. 

“... Yeah,” Jounouchi answers after a confusing pause. Otogi blinks at him. 

“Well?” he prompts with a forward nod that might be very slightly apologetic. 

“Yeah, I just want somethin’ for me and Anzu,” Jounouchi explains with a backward jerk of his head toward the dance floor which is through a large, open frame which might be more a hangar entrance than a door. 

“You and Anzu,” Otogi repeats, a little surprised. Maybe judgmental. 

Jounouchi crinkles his nose and gives him a look of distaste. 

“Not like that. She was just teachin’ me dancing stuff.” 

“That doesn’t really sound better.” 

“Hey, mind your business,” Jounouchi complains rather than put in the effort to come up with an explanation. Otogi wouldn’t admit it, but he feels a little disappointed, taken aback. He takes a deep breath through the faint pressure he feels at the center of his chest. 

“I thought you were making it my business,” he replies curtly. “You trying to get drunk?” he asks, just barely catching himself before asking, more cuttingly, if he is trying to get Anzu drunk. 

“No,” Jounouchi replies firmly with another crinkled snarl. Otogi takes him at his word and turns around, preparing melon sodas for them in fancy bottles with fancy straws that double their price. It’s a bet Jounouchi is willing to take, apparently. Jounouchi leans his elbow against the bar while he waits, and Otogi scans the crowd for Anzu. At last, he notices her coming a little closer to the opening between the two spaces. She stills for a moment, but then she seems taken in by the music again, like she has it in her blood to keep dancing. She seems to have struck up a conversation with a couple of girls for a moment. Then Otogi is giving the two drinks to Jounouchi. “Thanks, man,” is the response he gets. 

“Sure,” he says, not sure if Jounouchi even hears him before he wanders back to find his friend. 

A few moments later, when the proverbial coast is clear, his more recent acquaintance makes his way up the bar. Otogi uses wiping down the bar as an easy excuse to shorten the distance to go and greet him. The slightly older man’s hair hangs in his eyes fashionably. He and his friends – if that’s what they are – that Otogi has met all have that particular stylistic choice in common. They also share a certain wolfish swagger that Otogi finds a little enchanting in spite of knowing it puts some people off. It isn’t something he has, exactly, but he relates to it in his own apparent allure. Their image isn’t what interests him most, though. It’s their money that is offered so easily. 

“Evening there, diamond boy.” 

Otogi doesn’t know why this particular form of address is the one that has been chosen for him. At first, he had tried to correct them to just call him ‘Otogi,’ but his suggestion had been ignored each and every time. He guesses that they appreciate his services or riling him up. Either way, it isn’t all that important. Business is business, and they’ve made this business for him. 

“Any particular sighting for me tonight?” 

Otogi frowns and considers it, scanning the crowd for those he has served so far. He has a particular profile in mind. A young woman – pretty, not with a guy, preferably alone, looking. Coming back to talk to him more than once tends to be a good sign, but the two girls from a little while earlier had seemed a bit too close to be convinced to part ways, whatever their reasons. 

“Not so far,” he admits. 

The way Otogi sees it, he is just being paid to make the process of sifting through a sea of people a little easier. He is a central location, and girls like to talk to him a lot more than he likes to talk to strangers. It is part of his job to make small-talk sometimes, and he manages it, but if he can facilitate connections between guys who want to talk to girls who want to talk to them and get paid twice, sometimes three-times a regular tip? He is just performing a public service for pay. 

“You sure?” his unconventional business partner asks. He wonders if he should ask them if they have stupid codenames for each other, too – more politely than that, probably. 

Otogi frowns a little and turns to face him a little more completely, hand stilling on the bar where it is bunched in the white, damp towel. 

“What do you mean, ‘am I sure’?” he asks, simple and clear and polite. 

He hears a chuckle bubble up from within the other man’s chest. 

“I think you’re holding out on me, diamond boy,” he says with a half-shrug. 

“And  _ why _ would I do that?” Otogi asks, conversational but bristling. 

“Never mind why,” comes the reply. Then, Otogi finds that he is suddenly looking at the entryway to the loudest part of the club again. He sees the movements of people’s bodies as they bounce and sway to the music – dreams and nightmares. “I think I want her,” he says. 

It could mean anyone. It should mean almost no one, given the redirection of his attention to the crowd of people as the man had stepped aside. And yet, Otogi knows who he means – the only person he  _ could _ mean. His nostrils flare out with distaste. 

“Can’t help you there,” he says, tossing the towel in the nearest laundry bin tucked discreetly beneath the bar where there are several. He turns to get the usual glass he serves to the man and doesn’t quite shrug to prove his point. “What can I get you to drink?” he offers as if to soften the blow or simply to move on in the conversation. 

“Why not? Is she yours?” 

“Anzu?” he asks, and then he realizes with a slight drop of his shoulders that he probably shouldn’t have said her name to this man who won’t even call him his. With any luck, he’s really bad with names and will forget. “No,” he says, a little more firmly. “She’s with someone,” he offers, more explanation than he’d hoped to give. It isn’t quite true, as far as he knows, but it might as well be. 

He watches as the other man’s eyebrows shoot upward, practically disappearing in his hair. 

“Really?” he asks. He draws Otogi’s attention back without even apparently looking. “I suppose you mean the blonde bull who was buying soda from you a moment ago. Or do you?” 

Otogi notices then that Yugi – whose hair is helpfully distinctive almost anywhere – has caught up to Anzu. He isn’t sure where Jounouchi got to, but it doesn’t matter. 

“She’s with someone, you say,” Otogi hears, and it sounds more and more like a taunt. His stomach is dropping, hardening down into stone or ice, and he doesn’t even know why as he starts to set his jaw. “But which one?” a question is asked, too close to him from across the bar for comfort. 

\- - - 

The Pharaoh makes his way back down an incline that leads back out into the dancing crowd. At the edge of the throng, he gets his bearings. 

_ “Why did you come here?”  _ he gawks at his partner, silently because for a moment he isn’t sure where to find his voice in the midst of all of this noise. 

_ “For fun. That’s the idea of a lot of things, Pharaoh. For-fun,”  _ Yugi replies from within. 

_ “Then why won’t you have your ‘fun’ and let me have mine?”  _ he retorts, pleading a case he knows he has already lost because whatever means to force Yugi to take control again might be cruel and might draw too much attention to them both. It isn’t safe, and he will protect Yugi even at the expense of his own comfort. 

_ “Your fun sometimes involves violence I’d rather not think about,”  _ Yugi responds, seemingly blissfully unaware of how long it has been or the fact that it sobers the Pharaoh a bit to hear it. Sighing within the body he presently controls, he stops trying to communicate to his partner, leaving him be within the sanctuary of their shared, silent space. 

“Yugi!” he hears, and he lifts his head because he has learned to respond to that name that isn’t his own. He still does not know his own name, and for a second – after that gentle chastisement from his partner – he is lost in considering how strange it is that he has worn this shared title for so long when it is Yugi’s  _ name _ and no one else’s. 

He clears his focus when he closes the gap between himself and Anzu. 

“Hello,” he greets her with a nod, somewhat formally. 

He notices her blink at him a few times. He wonders if he sees disappointment cross her features. Strange that while it should trouble him that one of the only people in the world who yet knows he  _ exists _ should be disappointed to see him, it gives him a little melancholy hope, too. He smiles, the faintest genuine one he can manage. The thought isn’t the lightest to bear, but he has borne far worse. 

“Oh, it’s… you,” she says, a bit softly. It seems strange to hold such discretion in this terribly loud place. 

“I think my partner may have been a bit intimidated,” he says, a compliment and the last barb he will allow himself to indulge in jabbing toward Yugi before he settles into what must be. Yugi does not make it known if he is aware of it at all. 

“... Oh,” Anzu says, and she is definitely disappointed, though it doesn’t seem like it is  _ in _ the Spirit of the Puzzle this time. 

“I would force him out, but…” 

“No!” Anzu assures him, and she reaches out and takes hold of his forearm. Her fingers wrap around it, just above his wrist. “You’re out friend, too,” she says earnestly. “You shouldn’t have to miss out. Yugi can… dance with me later,” she says. He wonders if she thinks Yugi can always hear her when he is in control. He wonders if Yugi can, too. What they know between them has sometimes become like a gradient blur, after all their time together. 

The Spirit holds his arm a bit rigid and doesn’t quite let her pull him back out among all those people. He feels the heart within him beating faster, his skin heating a bit. 

“I’m afraid I don’t know the steps,” he says, presuming that there must be some kind of rules to the dance or dances he sees before them. 

Anzu laughs softly. 

“There… aren’t any,” she informs him. 

The Spirit frowns a bit. Then he shakes his head, requesting that they  _ not _ try and dance. 

“I’m afraid I would need to observe them far longer to understand,” he says. 

Anzu sighs and loosens her grip on his arm. Her hand lingers, though. 

“I could teach you,” she offers, but it is half-hearted at best. 

“Another time? Or a bit… later, perhaps,” he says, trying to compromise with her so he won’t have to see her be even more thoroughly disappointed. 

Anzu nods as her hand drops away. She looks off in another direction, toward another part of the large place they have entered into. 

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Honda says there’s a lot more to this place. Jounouchi said he was going to get me a drink, but he hasn’t come back yet. Come on,” she says, glancing over to his eyes and nodding before leading the way. 

**Author's Note:**

> In addition to being part of the overall series I'm writing, this is also sort of a Part 1 of 2 and this seems the best place to note that. The next installment may not be the continuation of this, but it will be completed in a satisfactory manner, with or without a "meanwhile" interlude. 
> 
> I thrive on feedback, so please leave a kudos or a comment or both. I would love to hear from you!


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